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Monthly Archives: September 2017

Sonic and I get up early after having camped just a few minutes from where our ride out of town dropped us off, and we set off in the dawn light to knock out the 11 miles of highway walking. Other than a few semis barreling down, there isn’t much traffic. And there’s a shoulder to walk on. Highway walks are far from ideal, but this could be worse.

Partway through the morning I call out to what I think is a hiker, sitting down absentmindedly in a field by the highway. Oh wait, just a hobo, I think when he doesn’t respond. Then he looks up.

“Hey, you hiking the CDT?” he calls out. Okay, maybe a hiker. Just semi oblivious to the world around him.

Clad in all my layers above the treeline.

Pounds started a few days before me from Canada, and took the insanely snowy highline trail that I’d heard was really dangerous. After a few minutes of questioning about it, I realize he was the hiker I’d heard about so much coming out of Glacier.

“Yeah, after I reported seeing another hiker fail to self arrest on the Ahern Drift the national park service detained me until he was found. But they put me up in a hotel, so I guess it could’ve been worse,” he shrugged. I’d only heard about two hikers making it across the Ahern, a steep bank of snow over a steep pile of rocks, back near the Canadian border.

In the right conditions, Colorado is pretty awesome.

Pounds ends up being annoyingly clingy, but it’s pretty easy to get ahead of him.

“I don’t think getting up at 5:30am is good, might have to start hiking at 8am instead,” he mentions.

“You’re more than welcome to do that, but I’m not,” I reply.

Sonic is a lot of fun to hike with, and we end up camping together almost every night. Even if there’s a large campsite, if I’m camping with other CDT hikers we almost always end up erecting our tents with overlapping guylines. We spend so much time alone, pretty common with only 35 others on the trail going southbound spread out over hundreds of miles, that when we find each other it’s like we’re making up for the days of not seeing another human.

Camping with her is a lot of fun, and we stay up late (like 9pm) laughing each night. Our senses of humor seem pretty similar: dark, twisted, and bizarre.

“I’m a level five fire wizard,” we decide to tell people when they give us doom and gloom about the trail. “Snow isn’t really relevant to me with my extensive repertoire of fire spells.” That usually ends conversations pretty quickly.

“Where’d you hear about this trail?” is another common question.

“Prison,” as a response also terminates the discussion when I’m trying to make miles.

This is me descending on the ridgeline, trying to race a storm to get below the treeline.

I know the day walkers don’t necessarily have bad intentions, but they’re really irritating after having been out here for a while. They often try to lecture us about hiking and wilderness survival. They’re usually well meaning, but we’re doing three times as many miles a day (28 to 35 a day) and have a much higher tolerance for discomfort compared to them. Usually I try to speed up past day hikers and weekenders, which gets a lot of comments like: “Why are you running uphill?!”

To which I reply, “Winter is coming!”

Sonic and I get separated in the Never Summer Wilderness, an apt name for Colorado, just outside Rocky Mountains National Park. Earlier we’d been talking about how the difficulty of the CDT has been vastly over hyped. This section makes me regret that comment. The trail gods probably heard it and have justly punished me for my insolence.

Rocky Mountains National Park is beautiful, and has an 18 mile loop that can be done as a day hike, but at this point we’re all just rushing to get through Colorado before it’s too late. The signs of winter are everywhere: bright yellow leaves on the aspens, cold nights, and shortening days. Winter is coming, the clock is ticking, and I need to get to New Mexico before it’s too late.

Grand Lake is a cool little town just outside the national park. It’s also right on trail, so no need to hitch. The lodge, on a hill overlooking the town, has dorms for hikers. It’s incredible, probably one of the best hostels I’ve stayed in, and has a large selection of teas in the common area. It’s also accessible by a short nature trail from the Rocky Mountains National Park visitor center, and I get a lot of strange looks for zooming down the easy path with all my camping gear.

I would definitely not want to be up here in a storm.

There’s a retreat of some sort in the lodge at the same time as our filthy hiker selves swarm it, and they shoot us puzzled looks as we pore over our topographic maps.

It’s been over a week since I last showered, and even longer for Sonic (“I got soaked in that rainstorm, that’s basically a shower,” she told me). The lodge provides us big, fluffy towels and we snack on a couple dozen fried eggs we cook in the kitchen. Life is good.

Walking on the street I spy a familiar Australian Shephard leashed up outside the public restrooms. Luna, my favorite southbounder! She barks and wags her tail when she sees me, and her owner finds me lavishing attention on her dog when she steps out of the bathroom. Her boyfriend is soon to follow. I haven’t seen them for a while, and I missed hanging out with them. But they’re off to camp on the trail before it gets too dark, though I’m sure I’ll run into them again soon.

That night it rains a lot, but I’m warm and dry in my bunk. Bliss.

I’d love to come back and appreciate better the nature out here. But in July or August, not the middle of September.

“There’s a breakfast buffet, they’re super hiker friendly and it’s awesome,” Sonic texts me in the morning. The cafe is the only place open in the morning with a seat available, which Sonic kindly saved for me. The buffet is phenomenal, with a plethora of pastries and hot food, and we both stuff ourselves.

After resupplying at the local grocery store, not the best I’ve encountered on trail, I set off around noon. I’d originally planned on staying until the evening, but I feel good and figure I might as well make some miles.

Grand Lake is a popular area for day hikers, who all ask me where I’m heading.

“Mexico!” I call out while I keep going. They just laugh. Nobody believes me when I say what I’m doing. And they roll their eyes when they ask how long I’m out for, replying that I started two and a half months prior in Canada and expect to have another couple of months to reach my destination. On the PCT everyone had heard of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, which is almost universally despised by long distance hikers for various reasons, but the CDT has no comparable work. It’s pretty obscure, and few people attempt it.

I night hike for an hour, having done 22.7 miles by 8:30pm. Setting up my tent in a dark parking lot in the middle of nowhere next to a sign that prohibits camping without a permit, I also spy a sign warning about bears in the area. There’s an optimal nearby tree for a bear hang, so I toss rope over a branch and suspend my food 10 feet in the air. By the time I get back to my tent, which was wet from rain prior to Grand Lake, it’s frozen solid. The ice crystals are beautiful, but if it’s this cold at 9pm then I know I’m in for a frigid night.

Hiking in the morning after having camped below the treeline in a sheltered spot.

I’m not wrong, and my 10 degree bag is barely enough to keep me comfortable with four layers of clothing. At 4:30am I wake up and pack up, trying to get over the 13,300 foot James Peak before the predicted storm that afternoon.

I later find out it got into the middle teens Fahrenheit that night, but I’m fine with my layers as long as I keep moving. There’s a confusing stream crossing with a broken bridge that takes me 15 minutes to figure out in the dark, but after that I’m cruising down the trail.

“You miss so much night hiking!” I hear constantly from non-thru hikers. But if they could see the way the dawn light illuminates the ice crystals on the grassy meadows, and hear the coyotes surprisingly close howling as a pack, I’m not sure they’d say that. Dawn is my favorite time on trail.

By 8am I’ve caught up with Baby, Dingo, and my favorite trail dog. Baby had sent me a panicked series of messages previously about single digit highs at James Peak, not having realized it was in Celsius.

It’s not super cold on the way up to James Peak, but non-flowing water is all frozen and doesn’t seem to be melting.

The wind is blowing hard at 12,500 feet, and we’ve still got almost 1000 feet to climb. Baby is concerned about Luna, who seems to be feeling unwell, but I literally run across the rocky terrain to charge up James Peak. It’s beautiful but cold, and I immediately scamper down into the valley to find a sheltered campsite.

Autumn is here, and winter is coming.

It’s already pretty cold when I get to the bottom of the valley. Although it’s early, I just camp at the bottom in one of many campsites hidden in a grove of trees. After dark I see a red flashlight shining through the forest.

“Sonic!” I call out. She comes over and camps nearby.

“What are we doing out here?” she asks. “This is so insane.” We’d just got confirmation when we had cell service on the ridge that a low pressure system was bringing cold and snow soon.

“Beans and her group did 86 miles in 36 hours, and they bailed off Gray’s Peak,” she mentions. There’s a pause while we think that over.

“I’ve been thinking of dropping low and taking the Silverthorne cutoff instead of that route,” I add slowly. I feel like I should enjoy the high routes in Colorado while I have the chance, but I also don’t want to be cold and miserable.

“Yeah, I was thinking the same,” she replies. And with that it’s settled. We’re not going to tempt the fates in Colorado. It’s hard enough in late September as is.

The 30 mile water carry turns into 35 miles because I misread the pretty vague instructions on the maps. But it’s fine, and my five liters get me through it.

Sonic catches up with me, and we take shelter from the heat under the first tree we’ve seen in almost a week. The road walk is kind of boring, but it’s flat, easy walking. I know Colorado will be neither of those, and that soon enough I’ll be wishing for heat, so I try to enjoy it while I can.

The general route of the CDT in Wyoming.

Getting to the first water source in a day or so is a glorious experience, especially when it’s cold and not infested by cow shit. I filter and immediately chug a liter, with the sun setting and the mountains of Colorado visible to the south.

Tomorrow we’ll climb up, up, and up out of the basin back into the peaks. But tonight we camp at the end of the road walk, as a surprising number of cars zoom past us on the gravel road. We’re in the middle of nowhere, why are there so many cars?!

We agree to set our alarms for 5:30am, concerned by how early it gets dark now, rather than wait for the sun to wake us. The desert is frigid in the pre dawn, and although my headlamp isn’t very powerful the sun starts to rise shortly after we set off on the sinuous, ever-rising route to Colorado.

We’ll do something like this route through Colorado. The weather may force me to lower trails and cutoffs to avoid inclement weather and snow.

We follow dirt roads up to a ridgeline, and I pull my phone out to check when we start the “super difficult” climb I’d heard so much about. Turns out we already did it… This trail can be tough in spots, and late season in Colorado can be rough, but so far the difficulty of the CDT is way over hyped.

It takes around 90 minutes to get a ride into Encampment, the last town stop in Wyoming, on a mountain highway with very little traffic.

When I connect to wifi I get messages from Baby, saying the fire closure is now 25 miles. She’s been on the phone with the forest service, and they have a 35 mile road walk to detour the closure but advise walking it ASAP. It should be good for a few days, but they expect the fire to only grow.

Got us a ride back to the trail, meet me at the bar. Sonic messages me. I’ve already paid the $10 to camp at the RV park, but it’s a hard hitch out and I want to get back to the trail ASAP.

“You kids like to smoke dope?!” the older woman asks excitedly when we get closer to the trailhead, after we’d told her stories about our trans-America hike thus far. She and her husband are super nice, but we don’t think it’d be a good idea to night hike drunk and stoned into a wildfire area during hunting season. So we politely decline.

Colorado at last! Because of the fire detour I couldn’t enter my fourth state of the hike via the trail, but it was still exhilarating seeing the sign. There were lots of hunters in the area, as well as forest service cars, so I felt pretty safe.

“I’m pretty sure she’s the same one who gave us a ride back to the trail from Encampment,” another hiker later told me. “She told us ‘stop being such a pussy and take a hit’ when we told her we didn’t want any.”

My first night in Colorado I was unable to find a suitable campsite by dark. I started going into a bit of a mental downspiral, having to jump off the road whenever a car came by.

What am I doing out here? This is so stupid. What if there’s snow on the ground and I can’t keep hiking? What if I wake up to multiple feet of snow? What if I get hypothermia in the San Juans? What if I need cold weather gear but I can’t get it?

I realize all these thoughts are counter productive, but Colorado is going to be really tough. The weather can change in an instant, and is notoriously unpredictable. Late September in southern Colorado is a dicey prospect, but there are ways to deal with it. Low routes and cutoffs proliferate the worst of it all: the San Juans. There’s not much I can do other than hike on, pay attention to the weather reports, take low routes when appropriate, and try to enjoy it as much as possible. The latter is easier said than done, and I feel like I have a deadline hanging over me. But the worst part is I have no idea what that deadline is!

The road walk around the fire wasn’t that bad. Lots of water, and most importantly there was a cafe along it! “Time for brunch!” Sonic called to me from the restaurant.

I catch up with Sonic and, as per usual, she’s having the exact same thoughts as me. “The San Juans are usually good through early October. Sobos have made it for years on similar timelines, we’ll just have to play it by ear,” she mumbles while eating her massive, hot breakfast at the café.

Sonic in the Mt. Zirkel Wilderness, a few miles after the end of the fire detour road walk. We took a scenic alternate and it was well worth it.

Hitching into our first Colorado town was easy, about 13 minutes for Sonic and I to get a ride at 8am. I pet the driver’s dog while we descended into Steamboat Springs, and I only wish the other Coloradans were as friendly as him. Our first stop, after the post office to pick up some new shoes and Colorado maps, was McDonald’s to get pumpkin spice lattes and eat a massive breakfast.

“Disgusting,” some woman muttered.

“At least we’re not eating at McDonald’s without walking 30 miles a day,” Sonic growled.

“Colorado is beautiful and I hate everyone in it,” I decided after we kept getting looks of disgust around town. I’ve never felt like hikertrash as much as I have in Colorado, being constantly judged by all the pretentious jerks from Denver.

Desperate hitches call for desperate measures! Pounds is another sobo from Los Angeles. I took a turn holding this sign while hitching out of a later town, Winter Park, and couldn’t help wondering what my crazy orthodox Jewish grandfather would’ve thought.

We leave in the afternoon, and it takes almost 90 minutes and two hitches to get a ride back to the trail. The guy who picks us up doesn’t really believe us when we explain we’re walking 2800 miles from Canada to Mexico. This seems a pretty common reaction. The CDT is fairly obscure, and there are probably only around 140 thru hikers this year. Compared to 2-3k each on the PCT and AT.

There are menacing black clouds of death on the horizon when we start the 11 mile highway walk in the direction of Grand Lake, our next resupply stop. We hurriedly set up our tents in an unofficial camping just off the road, but the storm passes along without a drop of rain. The weather in Colorado is so bizarre.

Rather than thunder, we’re kept up by the angry squeals of a squirrel. We seem to have set up camp in his territory. “Wish I’d brought my bb gun,” is the last thing I hear from Sonic as I fall asleep.

My apprehension about the difficulty of late season Colorado is replaced by excitement. It could be a lot worse, and so far things seem to be going well!

Descending down into Wyoming’s Great Basin, you get a feel for the contours of the land. It’s a giant bowl of desert ringed by mountains and makes for easy, flat walking.

The basin has no protection from storms, but what it lacks in shelter it makes up for in hordes of cows. There are also herds of wild horses roaming the landscape. Although I complain about it a lot, and it was rough in the middle of the day, it was overall a pretty neat section of trail.

The trees disappear and are replaced by cows. Not a trade I’d generally prefer, but after constantly having wet and freezing feet for the past two weeks I’m willing to make a few concessions.

I cross Highway 287, where you can hitch into the town of Lander, and keep going an hour and a half to South Pass City. South Pass is a Wyoming state park, and consists of a few old restored 19th century buildings. In lieu of hitching into Lander hikers can send a box of food to South Pass, which is what I did. Another hiker was camped out in the grass next to the restrooms, which the historic site keeps open at all hours for hikers.

Not a lot of people live in the basin. But this tiny town was pretty cool and super hiker friendly. Wyoming is awesome.

Judge Judy (not his real trail name, but I’ve renamed him without his consent for being such a judgmental old man and it’s stuck) is harassing the woman running the place, and I push my way through this insanity to send my father a postcard. Then I bolt, because there’s no restaurant here and I want to get dinner in Atlantic City before the region’s sole restaurant closes.

Like the rest of the basin, the 4.5 mile walk to Atlantic City is flat, dry, and on deserted dirt roads. I sit at the bar with a bunch of locals in cowboy hats and inhale a massive burger and peach cobbler. It’s the kind of place where the bartender calls any youth under 65 “honey” and seems to spend much of her time chatting.

The basin is pretty much like this for a week.

I walk half a mile outside of town and camp by the road. I’d done 20 miles by 2pm, plus another 4.5 to the restaurant, but I’m not sore at all. I feel strong, but not as strong as the wind that hammers my tent all night and makes sleep neigh impossible.

The Atlantic City episcopalian reverend lets me spend the night on the couch in the community center, which is my first time sleeping off the floor in about seven weeks. I hadn’t taken a day off for five weeks, so it’s probably time to do so. There’s a kitchen and lots of supplies, and I cook dinner before falling asleep at 8pm. Bliss.

The basin is cool for the first couple of days, but then it gets ungodly hot in the day and makes me hate everything. I don’t see another human for 47 hours, and I can see why. It’s a dust bowl in the middle of nowhere, with cows and some of the most disgusting cow-defiled water sources imaginable.

I scared away the cows at this spring and sat in a wooden enclosure while the midday heat fried what little remains of my sanity. Then the cows came back and started mooing at me. Whenever cows annoy me I just dream of getting a burger.

Hikers do all kinds of crazy things in this section, like 62 miles in 24 hours, but the midday heat fries my mind and I do only 25 to 30 miles a day. I try night hiking but the howls of coyotes all around me are a little disconcerting, so I just follow my usual dawn to dusk walking schedule.

The night before arriving at Rawlins, 120 miles from the last highway, a strong wind makes me collapse my tent and sleep on top of it.

No highway sign can tell me what to do! A police car briefly turned on his siren when he passed me but didn’t do anything, so I kept going. Oftentimes the police in these tiny towns are older guys who are very hiker friendly, and getting a ride into town from the sheriff is not unheard of while hitching.

In the morning I walk in the dawn light along the highway into Rawlins, and upon learning it’s an 8 mile round trip walk to the laundromat and campground just book a room. I spend about 23 hours in the Days Inn which has a hiker discount of $20 off.

The other hikers and I don’t really leave the hotel other than to get food. It’s amazing to have a room to myself and go down to pet Luna when I get the urge.

Sonic, who I met at REI in Columbus, has caught up with me. We hang out in the McDonald’s drinking pumpkin spice lattes and putting off leaving town. I’ve only met around 11 other southbounders since Canada, so meeting a new one is a pretty big deal. It turns out we went to Ohio State at the same time, and probably passed each other on campus walking to class. Small world. Or maybe not, considering there are almost 50k undergrads there.

Thankfully I’ve downloaded audiobooks from the Columbus Public Library to my phone to keep me occupied in the basin. Right now I’m listening to Endurance, about the Shackleton antarctic expedition. It’s not really visible, but a herd of wild horses are running across the road.

It’s 35 miles to the next water source (at the time I think it’s 30 miles, but soon learn the error of my ways). That’s pretty long, so I stock up on 5 liters and head out. I’d originally wanted to go all the way to Steamboat Springs in Colorado, which is about 150 miles away, but carrying five days of food plus all that water seemed masochistic. So I’ll stop in Encampment. There’s a small fire closure, so I’ll need to go into town to check on trail conditions anyways.

“It’s so cold!” Murphy calls with a laugh from her tent. I’m usually the first one to wake up and start hiking, but they’ll catch up with me pretty quickly.

Last night we’d crossed the Buffalo River to get to an amazing and spacious campsite. I’d left my socks to dry from the easy crossing on top of my tent.

Will it storm? Who knows. I sure don’t.

“My socks are frozen solid!” I call out, also laughing from how cold it is. Somebody with a thermometer later told me it was 24F/-4C that morning. Going through my pack I realize I’d left one of my liner socks on the other side of the river.

“Totally not worth it,” Murphy agrees when I say I really don’t want to cross the river there and back again to get it. Yay for my father’s Amazon Prime subscription! I’ll just have new socks mailed further down the trail.

Sometimes you just have to scramble on the trail.

We set off in the Teton Wilderness in the early dawn light, taking off layers as I climb and warm up from the movement. Getting up is always so hard when it’s cold and my 10F/-12C sleeping bag is so toasty, but within a few minutes of walking I’m usually fine. It’s just difficult to get to that point!

There’s only 15 miles/25 km from our campsite to the highway, where we’ll hitch into Dubois, but there’s no rush. There’s no way we’re doing the 37 mile hitch to Dubois before or during the eclipse.

I got some eclipse glasses in Grant Village, Yellowstone National Park. Didn’t want to start off Wyoming by going blind.

There’s a bit of dirt road walking towards the highway before cutting across a field with a barely discernable trail, which abruptly drops me off at US 26. There’s a lot of traffic in both directions and although the cars are going pretty fast, I get picked up by the second car.

Shortly before totality. The stars came out, the birds stopped chirping, and for two minutes it was totally dark. To the north and south we could see light on the horizon. I later heard it dropped 17F/8C degrees during the eclipse.

A Parisian and his boyfriend on a cross-America road trip drop me off in Dubois, and I immediately head to the Episcopalian church to reserve a spot…just to find out that at 3pm I’m the first one of the day. They let hikers and bikers sleep on the floor, which is nice considering the Super 8 Motel is $1000 a night, two night minimum, due to the eclipse.

Dubois has about 1800 people in the summer, and it’s not as packed as I thought it would be post-eclipse. Some woman at the Cowboy Cafe thinks I’m an employee, which sends some northbounders into a fit.

They had tea and popcorn at the Dubois church! I was so in heaven.

“Your shorts cut off mid-thigh, your beard is insane, and there are streaks of dirt all over your face. Of course you’re a waiter here,” a hiker says once the woman has disappeared.

The church is awesome, and Dubois has everything a hiker would need. Some coffee shops are an excellent bonus, and the laundromat has pay showers inside. I ask a cyclist from the church if he wants to split a washing machine since we both have so few clothes, and he looks at me as if I’d asked if he wanted to shower together. The cyclists are weird, and come across like princesses compared to the hikers. Motown, who remembers me from the PCT in Kennedy Meadows (I honestly have no recollection of her), asks if I want to split a dryer with her and her boyfriend.

Hitching inside the city limits of Dubois is illegal, but the point is rendered moot when some weird guy in his 80s asks if I want a ride back up to Togwotee Pass. He keeps offering to take me to random other places along the trail to cut off a day or so, and I have to tell him four times to just drop me off where he said he would. Like I would accept a ride from a stranger onto a dirt road in the middle of nowhere.

I give him $10 for gas (it’s a long drive) and wait until he’s gone before I set off so he doesn’t know which direction I’m going. Never tell strangers the exact route you’re taking, and never tell them where you’re spending the night.

The Winds are pretty spectacular.

There’s a 17 mile detour to Elkhart Trailhead, where you can hitch 15 miles into Pinedale. Everyone loves Pinedale, I’m fairly fast, and there’s no way in hell I’m doing a 180 mile stretch after all the northbounders shared their stories of running out of food.

I saw nobody for hours along this route.

Getting a ride into Pinedale is easy. There’s very little traffic at 9am, but the second car stops and a trio of South Dakotans make room for me. The Episcopalian church in Pinedale lets hikers sleep on the floor and use the kitchen, and there are three other hikers already there when I arrive.

Another shot of the Winds in the Bridger Wilderness.

One is a northbounder, which is strange because there’s no way he can reach Canada before winter. As a southbounder I have to reach New Mexico before the snow starts, but I have many fewer miles and a good deal more time than somebody trying to reach the Great White North. So it’s no surprise when he’s cagey about what he’s actually hiked, and I get the impression he’s just taking advantage of the hospitality of the church. The other two southbounders I haven’t seen before, but they started 12 days before me and took a different route. They also seem to be taking multiple days off in town, which is quite atypical with the tight weather window on a CDT hike. There’s just something off about the others, and it’s further compounded when they stay up late watching TV. I’ve never seen thru hikers be able to stay up past 9pm, also known as hiker midnight. I go upstairs, find a quiet corner, and try to sleep.

Around the end of the more spectacular parts of the range.

I can’t hear the television, but I still can’t sleep. Having trouble sleeping in towns was a common problem I remember in myself and others on the PCT. It’s just hard to sleep without the cold breeze, and my one night each in Dubois and Pinedale are the first times in over 6 weeks I’ve slept inside. It’s definitely an adjustment.

Near the northern boundary of the Bridger Wilderness at the Green River Lakes Trailhead.

I make a “CDT HIKER TO ELKHART” sign and stand by the side of the road with my thumb out. Within two minutes I’m in the car of a local, not much older than me, who’s on her way to do some hiking. It’s a Sunday morning in August, and it seems like everyone else in the northern Rockies is of a similar mindset.

“Little late for a southbounder, aren’t you?” is a familiar refrain that I hear fairly frequently from old white dudes who apparently have nothing better to do than strongly suggest I’m going to die in the snow in Colorado. This is part of why I avoid humans on trail.

“The others all came through a month ago,” I hear from one hiker. “September is a terrible month to hike in Colorado. The snow was nearly vertical when I was there in July, I normally do 25-30 miles a day and could barely manage 11! Plus, you know what happened to Otter when he went through late season.”

Here’s my response to this bullshit:

Not even Anish, who holds the fastest unsupported records for most of America’s long distance trails, had been through here a month ago. I pay great attention to where everyone is, and I’m in the middle of the pack of southbounders that aren’t yellow blazing (a reference to following the yellow blazes on the road by hitching, rather than the blazes on the trail).

In a typical year, September is the best month for hiking in Colorado. The monsoon season is over, but the snow and cold hasn’t started yet. October starts to get iffy, but I should be in New Mexico by that time.

Doing 11 miles a day in Colorado in July is a little ridiculous, considering the snow has largely melted by then.

If it takes you four months to reach the halfway point and it takes me two months, then we’re going at very different speeds. Your times are not likely indicative of what mine will be.

It’s true that a hiker with the trail name Otter doing a section of the CDT died in southern Colorado, with his body being found by a northbounder the following season. But he was hiking in November, two months after I’ll be in Colorado.

If winter comes early this year, there are lower routes I can take.

It normally rained lightly in the afternoon.

One guy near a trailhead (I try to just hike fast through these, I hate everyone) asks me where I’m from. “You Ohioans are always coming out here and don’t know what you’re getting yourselves into-” I ignore him and just pet his dog as he goes into the “aren’t you a little late for a southbounder?” tirade. I like his dog but not him, and cut him off to brusquely tell him bye halfway through. Who the hell says that? No wonder your wife left you last year (I’m also not sure how that was relevant to the conversation or how it came up). And how many Ohioans can be coming out here in the middle of nowhere in the least populated state in the country?

My maps said the detour to Pinedale wasn’t very scenic, but I have to disagree.

Although the Winds were visually stunning, I was glad to get out and enter the rolling, dry desert prairie of the Great Basin. Maybe I’m becoming too much of a misanthrope, but on the PCT I got to the point where I just avoided anyone who wasn’t a thru hiker. And I think that’s happening again on the CDT.